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Thursday, February 19, 2015

Our Homeschool Week in Review 2-16-15 to 2-20-15

This has definitely been an interesting week for us!

We started the week out with a record breaking snow storm on Monday that dropped about a foot of snow in our region of Kentucky in a relatively short period of time. There has been more snow through the week on top of what fell on Monday, and more is predicted for this weekend (along with possible ice!).

So Big Brother and I went out several times to measure the snow depth in our yard as it piled up more and more on Monday. Once while the snow was falling he took a sheet of black construction paper out and caught some powdery flakes of snow. We marvelled at how unique each tiny snowflake was!

Then on Tuesday, Daddy was home from work due to the snow, so after school we all bundled up and headed outside! Big Brother and Daddy threw powdery snowballs, made snow angels, and constructed a "cool" snow tunnel!

Little Brother (now 9 1/2 months) also bundled up to experience the snow for the first time! He seemed very fascinated in looking around at the winter wonderland our neighborhood had suddenly become. I picked up a handful of snow in my hands and let him touch it briefly with his little fingers. He seemed very shocked at how it felt, and I used the opportunity to work with him on the ASL sign COLD.

In other news, Big Brother has been learning about prayer in his Bible devotions this week. His theme verse has been 1 Thessalonians 5:17 "Pray without ceasing." He is also working on memorizing Psalm 23 right now, and he almost has it!

I am proud to say he passed his 26th spelling test of the year this week with a 100%!

In his Rod & Staff Reading book he has been reading about Saul being chosen as king and how he began to fall out of God's favor by disobedience. His favorite story this week was about when Saul's son Jonathan and his helper sneaked up on the Phillistine army. Big Brother loved acting this story out for me after he read it...complete with the earthquake God sent to confuse the enemies!

In English he is starting to learn now about paragraphs. He is learning about things like indenting the first line of a paragraph, finding out the topic of a paragraph, etc.

In math this week Big Brother began doing addition problems into the hundreds in which he had to carry over twice. He loves it for some reason!? We have also been learning about 1/2 and 1/4, 1 dozen=12 things, reviewing days of the week, and working out word problems that involve subtraction.

In our Geography studies this week his favirite activity has been putting together a big U.S. Map Puzzle! This was such a fun way for him to review all the states he's been reading about, where they are located, and their capitals. As he worked on the puzzle we also worked on directionality. I would ask questions like, "What state is south of Kentucky?" Or "Which ocean is touches the west coast?" etc.

In science we have gone from whales to Newton's 3 laws of motion! :) We have read about motion, force, speed, etc. and experimented using toy cars. He has been recording the results of his experiments in his science notebook.

In history as I have already posted we are currently studying Henry Clay. It has been most interresting to learn that we are in fact related to him...two different ways! (This is Kentucky after all, folks!) ;) So that just makes our learning about him really special for Big Brother! Get your FREE Henry Clay notebooking page here!__

In music he is currently practicing preparatory level arrangements of Doxology and Ode to Joy. He will be starting recorder band and handbell choir with our co-op just as soon as the weather allows!

Other than all this he has taken turns reading stories together with me, taken care of his sea monkeys, listened to Adventures in Odyssey episodes, and enjoyed chasing after his busy Little Brother!

Enjoyed reading about your week. What a sweet family. Loved the black paper and snowflakes idea. We are in northeast Ohio and receiving another 8 inches possibly this weekend. Visiting from Abundant Life. Have a blessed week!